Irish Presidential Election Analysis

Last Thursday, October 27, Ireland held a presidential election and the results were officially published on Saturday. According to the Irish Times the results were a follows for the three leading candidates: Michael D. Higgins (Irish Labour Party) 39.6%, Sean Gallagher (Independent but unofficial Fianna Fail candidate) 28.5%, and Martin McGuinness (Sinn Fein) 13.7%. The remaining four candidates together received 18.2% with none of them reaching seven percent. 

Martin McGuinness proved to be the kingmaker by accusing Gallagher on Monday night during a candidates' forum of taking a Fianna Fail contribution from a rich donor at an event a few years before. The accusation caught Gallagher off guard and he seemed to obfuscate in front of the cameras. He immediately went from being the frontrunner at 40 percent in the polls to the leading challenger. But by doing so McGuinness probably embittered a core Fianna Fail electorate, which will not forgive him nor Sinn Fein in the future. Sinn Fein slightly improved its standing over last year's general election, but received much less than the 14-18 percent that Mary Lou McDonald was predicting in the final week or the 20 percent that McGuinness polled at the start of the race. In comparison, Fianna Fail's unofficial candidate attracted a significant improvement in those constituencies that both FF and Sinn Fein contested last year.


The electorate seemed to demonstrate that it considered McGuinness to be more a paramilitary (Irish speak for terrorist) than a peacemaker and to be a foreigner as well. This confirmed trends demonstrated by other Northerners who have attempted political careers in the South, usually with Fine Gael. Northerners can be elected and have a career, but they won't be party leaders or presidents--except in Sinn Fein, which is predominantly a Northern party.

Fine Gael's Gaye Mitchell turned in an embarrassing performance for the party, but he was probably a poor choice. There was a reputation of less than honesty about him, which is reminiscent of Brian Lenihan Sr., the Fianna Fail candidate against Mary Robinson in 1990. The result did not hurt FF in subsequent general elections and the same will probably be true for Fine Gael, which is now Ireland's leading party after more than three-quarters of a century as the second largest party.

The result is also unlikely to affect McGuinness's stature in Northern Ireland where he returns to his role as Deputy First Minister after three weeks leave. In the North most unionists regard him as both former terrorist and peacemaker. McGuinness was reportedly reluctant to make the challenge for the presidency, but gave in to his party's draft.

For an analysis of the results of the election by the Irish Times see this article.  Or to avoid the archive charges go to the Ireland section of the website and look for the article entitled "Return of core Fianna Fail vote."

The Irish Presidential Race

On Thursday October 27 voters in Ireland--the Republic of Ireland--go to the polls to elect a new president. The presidency in Ireland is largely a ceremonial office devoid of any powers except for deciding on which party to turn to in order to form a government following an election. The presidency was created by the 1937 constitution written by Eamon de Valera. Until 1990 it was largely the property of Fianna Fail to hand out to worthy cultural figures and former senior party politicians. In 1990 Mary Robinson, a human rights lawyer running as an independent with the backing of both the Irish Labour Party and the Workers' Party, took the presidency away from Fianna Fail. Fianna Fail won it back in 1997 but ran Mary McAleese, a Northern nationalist and law professor at Queen's University of Belfast. She is now retiring.

In this election the main candidates have been four: Michael D. Higgins, a poet backed by the Labour Party; Sean Gallagher, a reality show star and former Fianna Fail member running as an independent; Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland and number two in Sinn Fein; and David Norris, a former senator and gay rights activist. Norris has been badly damaged by the revelation that he wrote a letter on behalf of a former lover, an Israeli wanted for statutory rape of a Palestinian. He hasn't recovered. Martin McGuinness was off to a strong start but has faltered as victims of the IRA have stalked him and the Irish Independent and the Irish Times newspapers as well as TV questioners have openly challenged his version of his past. A poll from the Irish Times has Gallagher at 40%, Higgins at 25%, and McGuinness at 15%, with the other four candidates making up the remaining 20 percent.

It is doubtful is McGuinness either expected to win when he became a candidate or even wants to win. After all, I think that McGuinness probably relishes the challenge of replacing Peter Robinson as First Minister if Sinn Fein can replace the DUP as the largest party in the North. The candidacy was really about raising Sinn Fein's profile in the Republic and outperforming Fianna Fail.

Sinn Fein has two natural constituencies in the Republic. First, are traditional republicans who were always Fianna Fail supporters and now feel abandoned after Fianna Fail ditched most of its traditional rhetoric about Irish unity as well as Ireland's constitutional claim to the Six Counties of the North during the peace process in the 1990s. They may have stayed with FF during the 2000s, but when the party suddenly imploded as a result of the Irish economic collapse last year they felt free to find a new home. They are particularly prevalent in rural areas and in the border counties along the border with Northern Ireland. The second group are the urban poor who felt left out by the Irish economic boom of the 1990s. They have traditionally voted for the Workers' Party starting in the mid-1980s then most transferred to the Democratic Left when that party split off from the Workers' Party in 1992 and then began to vote for Sinn Fein once the Democratic Left merged with the Labour Party in 1998. Sinn Fein was still under ten seats in the Dail until the 2010 election. Now the question is whether McGuinness has raised the profile of Sinn Fein enough to allow it to surpass Fianna Fail in the next general election.

In American terms Fianna Fail is comparable to the Republicans, Fine Gael (now the party in power) to the right wing of the Democrats and the Labour Party to the left wing of the Democrats. The Labour Party has flirted with Marxism in the past before settling on social democracy of the Western European variety while Fine Gael flirted with social democracy in the 1970s and 1980s before returning to free market principles in the 1990s. Fianna Fail in the past had hegemonic status within the Irish party system based on a unique blend of nationalist rhetoric, free market rhetoric, and cronyism. It remains to be seen whether Sinn Fein can do a comparable job of mixing socialist and nationalist rhetoric (that some have claimed is reminiscent of the parties of the Radical Right in Europe during the 1930s).